Programas de ciencias ambientales y salud. Un nuevo profesional de salud para los nuevos escenarios de riesgo y vulnerabilidad

Today it is becoming increasingly necessary to consider health a human right linked to development. In order to do so, multiple factors need to be taken into account. Hence, health will no longer be the exclusive purview of medicine. To build health, factors related to the origin of diseases and those affecting the well-being of the population must be taken into consideration. They should be analyzed from a perspective that covers the plethora of new risk scenarios (polluted sites and precarious jobs) in a context of vulnerability (poverty, marginalization, violence, social security, among others), both for human health and the environment. Consequently, a new health professional that is capable of analyzing the new risk scenarios from a transdisciplinary point of view, of dealing with all social, chemical, physical, biological and ecological threats and, in addition, of devising social innovation schemes for preventing and tackling the deterioration of well-being and the construction of health is needed. Therefore, we have created a health and environmental science program to train professionals that have a new perspective which deems health a strong transforming element for change, a driver of social development and an axis of social cohesion—not just the absence of diseases or illnesses.